The Death of a Civil War Veteran

I briefly mentioned the Thompson family, who lost their youngest child, Hugh, in 1909 following an accident at the Ainsworth crossing.

At the moment they are part of Ainsworth pre-history, because they left the Ainsworth area in 1897, two years before my newspaper-reading began. But they spent over 30 years farming south of Ainsworth; Alexander served as Ross Township assessor for 18 years, and then two years as Lake County assessor; and by the time he retired from farming and moved to Hobart, he owned nearly 200 acres of prime farmland, bordered on the east by what is now State Road 51 and bisected by (present-day) Route 30.

Alexander was born on a farm in Streetsboro, Ohio, on July 10, 1838, to Scottish immigrants, he being the first of their children to be born in this country. He left the farm to spend a year studying at Hiram College (and both his obituaries point out that future U.S. president James A. Garfield was then on the faculty). After that one year, he returned to the farm, where he stayed until the Civil War broke out in 1861 and Alexander volunteered to fight for the Union cause. He served a year in the Ohio infantry. Then it was back to the farm again. On November 28, 1862, he married Mary J. Watson. They came to Ross Township in 1865, settling on the land south of Ainsworth — but in 1865 Ainsworth did not exist, or else was no more than a cluster of a few houses, soon to be joined by a one-room schoolhouse and known as Hickory Top.

And there he stayed until 1897, when at the age of 59 he retired from farming (although he retained ownership of his land, at least for several more years) and moved his family to Hobart. He and his son Fred went into the grocery business as A.C. Thompson & Son. In 1913 they sold their store to George Sauter and Armen Meckeldy.

On August 26, 1914, Mary Thompson died at the age of 81.

In November of 1915, Alexander replaced the late Cyrus Smith as Vice President of the First State Bank in Hobart.

Around that time his health began to weaken. In the late autumn of 1916 he went to stay in the home his son Fred, where he remained until his death on January 30, 1917.


(Click on images to enlarge)
Mary and Alexander's grave markers in Crown Hill Cemetery. (No, I don't know why his middle initial is "E." here and "C." almost everywhere else.)




The Thompson family monument.


Sources:
♦ 1891 Plat Book.
♦ "Alex. C. Thompson, Civil War Veteran, Answers Last Call." Hobart News 1 Feb. 1917.
♦ "Death of A.C. Thompson." Hobart Gazette 2 Feb. 1917.
♦ "Death of Mrs. A.C. Thompson." Hobart Gazette 28 Aug. 1914.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 29 Nov. 1912.
♦ "Mrs. A.C. Thompson Called to Her Reward." Hobart News 27 Aug. 1914.
♦ "New Grocery Firm." Hobart Gazette 1 Aug. 1913.